Track Listing
by blinkblink
Summary: A series of vignettes from a CD's track list; some have only weak ties to the title and few have any relation to the songs. None necessarily take place in the same universe. Varying degrees of SnakexOtacon.
1. Possession

The CD in question is Sarah McLaghlan's _Fumbling Towards Ecstas. _Two of these, _Circle _and _Hold On, _have spoilers for MGS4 and will be marked in the title and at the top. As for the usual disclaimer: I continue not to own anything. Except a lovely poinsettia which I recently purchased.

_POSSESSION_  
Snake likes to watch himself in Hal's eyes when they make love. It would be better if the engineer's eyes were black, dark to match the sometimes-colour of his hair, inky as the slick hue of oil. But he can hardly complain; the light gray of Hal's eyes is something he's always liked, even back when they met and all he could think to compare it to was shadow on snow. Back when the first thought that lodged itself in the depths of his mind was that at least if the man decided to try a disguise there would be no trouble about recognising him.

Besides, when he's staring into them, the engineer's pupils are usually dilated so far that the irises are only a slim silver frame anyway.

In a long life of regimented seclusion and solitude, closeness was not something Snake was raised or trained to value. Friendship and compassion, while not forbidden, were never encouraged. Sex was a relaxing and necessary pastime, nothing more. Emotions were something to be turned inwards, not spread outwards like so many fingers waiting to be cut off. The only reason to genuinely want to be near the same human being for an extended period of time was to learn their habits, probably with an aim to slitting their throat. Snake, never good at doing things by halves, complied with this regime by burying himself in a steel cell and then cementing it shut.

He lived locked in that vault for fifteen years, and it turned him out an emotional cripple thirsting for something he didn't know. A man with more than a decade of living in the frozen tundra of his own skin to make up for, leaping out desperately to quench his thirst by drowning in the cure.

So he pushes for contact; crushes their bodies as close as he can and holds Hal tight until he can almost believe the engineer's heartbeat is his own, until the damp slide of Hal's skin against his is an extension of himself, until they are as close as they can be to being one whole man rather than two achingly separate ones. Until Snake can be sure that he's escaped the cement-covered cell he spent all those years trapped in, is sure he's left his solitude far behind. Until he is there in Hal's eyes, staring back at himself.


	2. Wait

_WAIT_  
"Just wait a second; it takes time to hack encrypted files you know. Geeze, you really are like an animal." A bright affronted tone, the edges brittle with fear of bodily harm.

"You'll have to wait for it to pass directly under the bridge, and make sure you fall in the shadow; the weather looks bad and I don't trust the camo in the rain for more than a few minutes." A tone just slightly tinged with self-importance, the thin superiority which comes from knowing the material better than the next man.

"Snake? Wait- what do you mean Ocelot's there? Snake? What problem? Snake, respond. Dammit, what's happening?" A terse voice, sharp as glass shards.

"The wait time on Raiden's communications with 'the colonel' suggest whoever he's talking to is nearby, Snake. On the Big Shell kind of nearby. I'm still waiting for the signal analysis to finish, but I'm pretty confident. I don't know what's going on here, Snake, but watch out. This isn't what we thought it was. At all." Straightforward confidence and competence, built on a foundation of grimness.

"I was starting to wonder if you weren't going to come back. I've been waiting for – for days. I thought you might not. Might never come back. Like her." A broken whisper.

"You should give yourself more time. I mean – maybe, wait a little longer between missions. Just a little, you know?" Hesitancy, wearing a mask of light-heartedness.

"Snake. Wait a little longer. Please. Just… just a bit longer. Stay with me." Desperation. Heartbreak.


	3. Plenty

_PLENTY_  
Hal starved for more than three decades. Hunger gnawed at his insides like thousands of tiny parasites, chewing through his flesh and bones day by day, month by month, year by year, until his gut felt like acid-eaten steel wool. It love rather than food he went without; a couple of weeks without the latter and you're only a few months of decomposition away from a skeleton in the dust, but it's possible to live without the former; doing so rips the meat away from your bones piece by piece and turns you to a skeleton on the inside over the span of increasingly agonising decades. Like most people, he hungered for compassion and caring and possibly even romance. And starved.

Even in his childhood his father only threw him scraps, more often than not passing him over for either work or a prospective step-mother. The eventually victorious step-mother brought a step-sister, who fed him honey-sugared love for two years, strong and sticky enough to fill the yawning cavern of his stomach and make him forget his hunger. It put no meat on his bones, but he burned through it fast and intense, rising higher and higher with the strength it gave him until she left and he came crashing down, as empty as before and even worse off knowing what he had lost. The step-mother gave him sickly-sweet tenderness laced with poison, which stuck in his throat and burned his stomach.

After her, he only seemed able to scrounge leftovers, thrown to him indiscriminately or by accident which more often than not left him hungrier or sicker than before, or both. The world provided only thorny husks, dry and leathery with barely enough substance to sustain him and he still forced them down. Finally, insides scratched and slashed and torn to pieces he turned away from them, to the only substitute he knew. For six long years he scraped by on the dry tasteless wafers he dug out of anime and convinced himself that it was everything he needed while inside he slowly shrivelled, no longer even noticing starvation's bony hand. Until, teetering at the edge of a precipice he was too weak to see anymore, he found a strong hand.

Snake's love isn't saccharine. It's not coated in honey, or dipped in sugar. It's not the meat and potatoes Hal imagines most normal people find somehow, apparently searching for it in some way which is radically different than his own since he's never seen a trace of it. Snake's love is curry and dark chocolate, hot and spicy and with just a hint of sweetness in the aftertaste. Stronger flavours than Hal has ever known, thick with heat that warms his long-abused stomach. Slowly, achingly slowly, he begins to reverse 32 years' worth of atrophy. For the first time in his life, Hal knows plenty.


	4. Good Enough

_GOOD ENOUGH_  
They all have standards, although no two are the same.

Philanthropy's are towering, tips damp with dew from scraping the clouds. The absolute need for perfect performance and zero possibility of outside awareness of their existence, never mind the possibility of recognition. Philanthropy is a flawless machine, that is the only way it can work, that is all that is acceptable.

Snake's standards are not much lower. He acknowledges after years of ignoring the issue all together that he's human and thus potentially capable of mistakes, of blunders. But when he's in the suit, thin-soled boots treading over enemy terrain, he slips through this world like a ghost and leaves no traces.

Otacon is a perfectionist, and as such "good enough" is not in his dictionary. It's easier for him; he can prepare most of his coding beforehand and run through it to check for even the slightest errors which might microscopically weaken the iron-clad programs he writes. But when the chips fall hundreds of strokes flow from under his fingertips, each and every one exactly right.

Dave is a teeter-totter. He accepts no compromises in machinery, hygiene, or cleaning. But he falls down on clothing and cooking and drops right off the board at household possessions. He knows quality when he sees it, but there's no point in paying money for quality furniture or appliances which will be lost at the next move. As for acquaintances, he is utterly exacting, and the list of people he'll talk to is dwarfed only by the list of people he'll leave his partner alone with.

Hal requires state of the art electronics and tools like his heart requires blood to pump. Everything after that is dumped in the secondary category of not necessary for survival, including food, clothes and decent eye-wear. He changes his glasses when Snake comments on his weaponry sighting, and his clothes when Dave begins to complain about the missing buttons and fraying cuffs. The idea that his current acquaintances could be sorted according to a set of standards simply doesn't occur to him.


	5. Mary

_M__ARY_  
"The priest's glaring at us."

"That's all they do. In any case, he can't push us out."

"Maybe he can't push _you_ out, but I'm pretty sure that whole asylum thing expired a couple of centuries ago."

"I think we can probably milk the brotherhood of men for something."

…

"This kind of reminds me of that story. You know, the one with the hunchback and the gypsy. Except for the Paris part."

"Hopefully we get a better ending."

"Huh?"

"…How do you think it ended? 'And they all lived happily ever after'? … That's Disney."

"So, what, everyone died?"

"Pretty much. Priest falls down stairs, girl hangs, hunchback dies hugging her corpse under the scaffold."

"That's grim."

"My kind of story."

"Really?"

"…Nah. I'm just waiting for the long legs to show up. Hey, here comes the priest; start praying."


	6. Elsewhere

_ELSEWHERE_  
Philanthropy had a home, and it was called Elsewhere. Not unlike Air Force One, which might have supplied the idea, it was wherever they were. In the past it had been a log cabin, a derelict farm house complete with windmill, any number of dingy short-lease apartments, a house boat, a Jeep Cherokee, and just once a red-brick white-fence family home complete with green yard and cedar patio.

"Hello suburbia," was Snake's gruff comment, ditching his pack on the floor of the kitchen. Furnished with hardwood floors, wood panelling and a granite counter-top with inset sink, it was also the room with fewest windows on the first floor.

"We have money, you know. We could rent a motel room. We could even rent a hotel room, if we were feeling really upscale." Otacon rolled his eyes, putting his own duffel bag down with more care.

"Money leaves a trail, and sooner or later someone'll pick up an unbroken one. Besides, you wanna stand up in front of the UN and explain the rows of Holiday Inn charges?"

"Like they would let me in the building. And you're trying to distract me from the topic: namely that we're _squatting_ in houses now."

"It doesn't belong to anyone." Snake pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and shook one out with a quiet shuffle.

"Amazingly, that _in no way_ negates the squatting aspect." Otacon reached out and grabbed the cigarette, putting it away in his own coat's pocket. "And no smoking. Do you _want_ to advertise that someone's been in here?"

Snake shrugged. "So long as we're gone by the time someone's around to notice, I'll advertise that the goddamn presidential campaign was here." He turned to glance around the empty kitchen once more, running a critical hand over the cool surface of the countertops. "This place, though. Gah. People live like this?" The soldier's lips twisted in disgust, throat producing something between a snort and a growl. His eyes tracked up to examine the hanging light fixtures, tiny halogen lights covered with ornate blue glass shades.

Otacon blinked, glanced around. "What's wrong with it?" Curiosity, but not necessarily disagreement.

Snake gave a snorting sigh, swept his arms out in a broad motion which encompassed not only the room but the house, the lawn, the cedar wood-slat porch and white-picket fence. "It's just so damn pretentious. Trying too hard to be perfect and impressive, on a budget. The kind of house meant to rub your neighbours' nose in the dirt, because you're half an inch higher on the ladder than they are and they'd better know it. Can't imagine living here."

"I bet most Americans would kill for a house like this."

"Most people are idiots."

"And I used to think you were depressing. But you're right. This kind of house… it's not a home. It's for showing off and wearing expensive dresses that really fashionable people wouldn't be caught dead in, and drinking badly mixed cocktails and wine that's been stored in one of those bottle holders people buy to show off the fact that they collect wine. No kids, no family, just pride and showmanship. It's no Elsewhere. Just nowhere." If the engineer's tone had the ring of personal experience to it, the soldier didn't comment on it.

"Good thing we brought some really greasy pizza then. And damn if I forgot the napkins."

"We are leaving tomorrow, right?"

"First light. Not hanging 'round here any longer than necessary."

"Good. Where's that pizza? Oh, and here, this is yours." He handed over the cigarette, lips twisted into a slight smile.


	7. Circle: MGS4 spoilers

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter contains spoilers for MGS4 through to the end of Act 4: Twin Suns.

_CIRCLE_  
Shadow Moses. A decade ago the base had been his enemy, as much an opponent as any of the FoxHound officers parading through its gray halls, leaving their footsteps in the snow. Each new room an unknown, each tiled corridor a mystery at a time when uncertainty meant death. The base was uncompromising and dangerously edgy, equipped with full state-of-the-art technology as well as older but equally deadly standbys. A perfect match to Solid Snake, slipping through the halls with weapons ranging from the Stinger on his back to the knife in his belt, sharp and silent as a blast of arctic wind.

It's strange, but now the base feels almost like a friend. His memory is one thing he has yet to lose, and now Shadow Moses is no mystery. He knows the nooks and crannies, finds familiar bolt-holes and scoping points immediately. Even the equipment and spare ammunition is where he remembers it being, as if left out for him. He knows all the secrets here, and can use them to his benefit. Now the base is working with him, instead of against him.

Shadow Moses has aged alongside him, years of Alaska's furious winters having ravaged whatever the post-Incident military strike did not. He can be almost at ease here, has found a kindred spirit in this badly-aged giant that no human could ever be. It's just as rusty and decaying as he feels. It's a haven now, where ten years ago it failed to be Liquid's. And it's his companion, is helping him to slip by the infestation of creeping terrors roaming through its frozen halls. He belongs here, he defeated it years before the creatures were created and it is his to use. He knows far more about its turns and traps than they do. They are the intruders, the enemy. He looks for the floorboards that tried to kill him before and knows instinctively now, as if by long association, how to use them to fry the Gekko. Things have come full circle.

FoxHound's footprints in the snow are long gone. His are already disappearing.

In the depths of Shadow Moses, where he left it all those years ago – only 10 years, a lifetime – Rex lies sprawled in its shallow grave on frost-licked concrete. At his command it staggers to life, pulls itself together for him, or for its creator. The limping, crippled beast is the perfect partner for him now; just as a decade ago it was strong and crushing and utterly sure, the perfect opponent for Solid Snake.

He navigates his way out with no need for a map, no need for Otacon's instructions in his ear, through crumbling hallways and rubble-filled storage rooms somehow far more familiar than the belly of the Nomad. Memories buried long enough to have become closer to instinct, and thus somehow more real, direct him seamlessly. He sweeps through the derelict, rusty maze with complete assurance and, deep down, a tiny seed of bittersweet warmth.

Old Snake, for the first time in his life, feels that he has come home.


	8. Ice

_ICE_  
The ice on the lake was several feet thick this time of the year. Rex could have marched across it without a crack. But the engineer was shuffling along behind him; a kid pretending to skate; a man afraid to take his feet off the ground. His sneakers ploughed twin trails through the snow, building valleys along either side. Snake regretted telling the engineer they had left terra firma.

"It's not going to break. The ice is several feet deep. There's no danger." Conversation was for civilians in brick apartments and white slat houses and, if necessary, superior officers. And friends, it occurred belatedly to Snake. But it had been a long time since he'd had either of those. An age, and less than 24 hours. The two links had snapped with brittle ease, forged too hot and cooled too fast; one buried at the bottom of a military disaster, the other under a tank's massive bulk. Beside a fallen angel with a fiery halo.

"Global Warming is melting our glaciers," said the man in a slightly nasal tone. Snake wasn't sure whether it was due to hauteur or a runny nose.

"Maybe, but nothing short of a nuclear meltdown's melting this lake until spring."

"Good thing we stopped it, then."

"If we hadn't, I don't think this would be a concern." It had been a long time since anyone had wanted to talk to him for the sake of it. Forever, and again less than 24 hours. But she was buried in a concrete crypt. Beside a raging demon with a crushed spine, pinned firmly to death this time by several tons of frost-covered steel.

The ice made a kind of coughing squeak under the long sweeps of the engineer's runners. Slowly, careful as a pup being coaxed away from its mother for the first time, the scratches became crunches as the engineer shifted from shuffling to stepping. When the ice didn't open to swallow him, his paces grew more confident. Snake, safe in the lead, rolled his eyes. Although he would have done it face to face with the engineer anyway.

"By the way, where are we going?" A bit of a late question, considering they had been travelling together for almost five hours, four and a half on the snow mobile followed by a further half hour of walking so far. Snake had never met anyone who took five hours to ask a life-or-death question. Until 24 hours ago.

"Where do you want to go?" He asked it on a whim, seized by an unusual curiosity. Like a child stirring up the bottom of a pond to see what would rise up. The engineer didn't seem to make any logical sense, and that was interesting. In a train-wreck kind of way.

"Well, somewhere with a heater would be nice," suggested the engineer. "And maybe some coffee." As though those were the only two demands he could muster. Emmerich would definitely have lost the Cold War. Or any war, for that matter.

"I can arrange that." It was a source of reassurance. Even after so many failures, and he didn't spare himself the whip by avoiding the thought _so many corpses_, there were still things he could do. Things he could arrange. His thoughts and memories were tied to yesterday, but his actions were a loose string. He marched on towards the future, and the engineer crunched along behind him.


	9. Hold on: MGS4 spoilers

SPOILER WARNING: This contains spoilers straight through to the end of MGS4.

_HOLD ON_  
Snake never wanted to be one of those introspective old geezers, sitting on the couch in a mouldering silence while younger generations romped around him, only occasionally breaking in with clever comments that the kids didn't care about anyway. But when he was young he hadn't wanted to be a crippled old clone by his 42nd birthday either, and see how well that had turned out.

He had known for years and years, pretty much since meeting the man actually, and discovering that he had designed and built an entire walking tank without ever once even suspecting that it might be used for evil, that he and Hal were fundamentally different. That the engineer was fundamentally different from almost everyone Snake had known, ever. It just didn't strike him until after the whole Naomi fiasco exactly how they were different.

Even for love, which the soldier would occasionally admit to feeling, he couldn't ignore imperfections, although awareness and caring were two different things entirely. He knew, had known since that night on the ice field standing at Rex's doors with the dogs howling in the biting wind, that Hal took something of a close-minded view of death. That he mourned the loss of Sniper Wolf, and Emma, and Naomi, as people he had loved. People he had loved with various parts of his heart, cutting it up and giving it away like chocolate so that now in the end he guarded what slivers he had left more closely than he had in those early days (but still to Snake's mind gave them out far too easily). And when he inevitably lost them, he lost loved ones, not individuals. He mourned like children do, crying for their mothers not because a woman will never take another breath, but because they are now alone.

Snake shrugged at that; how others mourned was no concern of his, and however selfish it seemed, it wasn't as if they were around to care anymore. And, whatever else could be said, Hal was more than generous with his love. Hal, in fact, was generous in very nearly all aspects of his life. Despite being a complete recluse and extremely awkward in social situations, Hal was a people person. When left alone he turned inwards, burrowing deeper and deeper into his computers, becoming more and more of a machine which ran on codes and scripts and spoke in input commands and binary while the part of him which was human hibernated, a dormant tree waiting for a warm touch to wake it.

Hal the person, not the computer genius who fed his starving humanity on overdramatic anime to reduce his hunger for human contact to a manageable roar, was other people. He lived for them, lived with them, lived as them. He threw himself wholeheartedly into their lives and let his own be shaped by the currents they created. He defined himself by others, grafting them into his life and his own into theirs. This ran completely contrary to Snake's solo personality, to those of the soldiers and commanders he had served with. Being solitary by nature was a requirement of his job, but more than that, it was a way of life he didn't question. Didn't even think about. It was just there, like a pulse, like his breath. It ran through him as an electric current. And in Hal, the polarity was reversed.

Snake wondered, vaguely, whether the Naomi affair wasn't at least partially an attempt at escape, a dive from a sinking ship. An effort to find a new pillar, a new love, a new life. Snake was close, so close he could taste it, just slightly sour, to being able to wish it had succeeded. To wish Hal had gotten off this tanker. Because it was going down, and it was going to be fast and ugly and Hal would be left cold and alone with no self to fall back on and enough mourning to bury him. The engineer had been getting better, getting stronger, a sapling freed from the overbearing shadows around; reaching towards the sun and slowly finding its own form. With Philanthropy's disbanding and Otacon's retirement, Hal Emmerich was learning to stand without support. And Snake knew, knew with the bitter taste of an old man's wisdom, that when his hand was taken away the engineer would fall.

Snake watched him, the soldier sitting in a hard-backed chair at the dinner table because dammit he didn't need a cushion, watched Hal stir something in a pot feverishly, a race against heat and another burnt dinner. And he wanted to say, all he wanted to say anymore, was _hold on to yourself, just as tight as you can_. But the only refuge he had from this curse of age was refusal to bow to it, and so that was a part he refused to play.


	10. Ice Cream

_ICE CREAM_  
The townhouse had a balcony, although Snake immediately marked it out of bounds. Otacon worried, the kind of vague itching worry which although often forgotten is never quite erased, that the potted flowers set out on it were going to die. "Better them than us," was Snake's immediate answer. Judging by the pristine state of other houses' flower boxes, the engineer wasn't sure that was a sentiment shared by the rest of the neighbourhood.

The townhouse was situated in a relatively high rent municipality on the edges of Zurich, not quite separate enough from the city to be its own village, but not quite close enough to be just a suburb. The distinction between rural and city was much fuzzier here than in any major North American city the pair had lived in, best expressed by the fact that although the townhouse faced out onto a road lined with other spotless brick townhouses, there were several large cows living in the field behind it.

A Philanthropic ally had lent them the spacious residence in order to allow the two-man NGO to attend an off-the-books meeting of low level Security Council delegates without leaving any trail on the books of even their false passports being in Switzerland. There wouldn't in fact be records of them even in the area, as they had flown into Amsterdam and driven south in a loaned car. All the borrowing from unknown acquaintances served to make Snake incredibly twitchy, which made Otacon twitchy by association.

And yet, despite the frenetic need to constantly be watching their movements and keeping a record of everything potentially collecting fingerprints or hair – Snake was pouring bleach down the bathroom drainpipes every night – there was something attractive about the place.

They took trams into the centre of the town, buying tickets along side every other traveller despite the fact that ticket purchasing was policed almost entirely by the honour system. Restaurants being an unaffordable luxury, they bought their food from local farmers' markets. Otacon bargained with the shopkeepers in good if rusty Hochdeutsch and came out ahead as long as they answered in the same and lost all headway as soon as his smiling opponent pressed for home field advantage in Schweizerdeutsch. Snake did better by playing on the good-natured pity and helpfulness of the shopkeepers, forging through with a heavy English accent and no apparent grasp of conjugation.

Meat being almost as unaffordable as restaurants, they ate bratwurst with mixed vegetables every night off pristine scallop-edged plates with glinting cutlery that was too heavy for an alloy. The tables and sideboards were made of cherry wood, held together by clever workmanship and carving rather than pins and nails. The chairs and couches had similar wooden frames, seats themselves fitted with embroidered covers. The Philanthropists, put highly on edge by a room whose furniture pieces were each apparently worth more than their monthly living budget, mostly sat on the floor.

On Sunday afternoon, meetings finally concluded, they bought homemade ice cream at an exorbitant price from a local vendor (Otacon bargained). They ate it after dinner sitting on the shining wood floor next to the deck windows, two men, two spoons, one carton of ice cream. On the other side of the hedge separating the townhouse's back yard from farmland, the cows lowed in simple contentment. When the pastel blue summer sky had taken on a hint of pink the local church bells began to chime, clear voices ringing through the brick-lined streets. On the deck, the flowers danced in the gentle breeze, bright velvet petals swaying in time to the bells.

For a few hours, Snake forgot about the bleach.


	11. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

Warning: This is tipping the scales past R...

_FUMBLING TOWARDS ECSTASY_  
They find an odd grace in each other. Hal has more than a bit of romanticism in his soul, and it hardly requires watching through the tinted lenses of ecstasy and afterglow to see the clean lines of Dave's tiniest movements as amazingly attractive. It's made all the more so by the fact that in every day life, Dave moves like a normal man. He slips on slick linoleum, knocks into the hollow plastic of the bathtub, and walks into open cabinet doors. Hal isn't fooled by the act, knows perfectly well that alone Dave moves like a ghost. But around the engineer he wears clumsiness like an imperfect disguise, remembering to walk heavily and occasionally even drop things but forgetting the everyday minor pains caused by inattention. Dave has never barked his shin on a chair, never jammed his elbow on a table corner or slammed his shoulder into a doorway. And, during sex and immediately after, the disguise falls with the rest of his clothes, mind otherwise occupied.

There's the litheness and grace of an acrobat or a dancer in his movements then, the smooth strength of a man with absolute knowledge of his abilities. Hal finds it stunning, and all the more intoxicating for the knowledge that he will never see it outside this situation. So, with a slight sense of almost voyeuristic guilt, Hal stills his movements as long as he can. Loosens his grasping hands and slows his twisting hips while his breath comes in short sharp gasps and his heart slams against his ribs. Holds back the wave cresting inside as long as he can, until he's burning and breathless and seeing stars rather than Dave, and the soldier is cursing in his ears. He draws out every movement, every stroke, every touch, to watch Dave with veiled eyes. To revel in the grace of his movements, for just a second longer.

Dave would be the second to admit Hal has only a sliver of gracefulness to his whole being – the engineer himself would undoubtedly be the first. There is a glimmer of it in his long fingers, narrow and skilful as a pianist's, but otherwise Hal missed that boat entirely. And yet, to the soldier, Hal has a very deep measure of grace about him. It's not a physical thing, and that puts Dave at a loss as to how to think about it. Mostly he doesn't. He can feel it, and that's more than enough. There's a hint of it in the way the engineer lies beside him after sex, relaxed and warm and appearing entirely unconcerned about the soldier except for the way he tilts his head to rest it against Dave. His bright eyes catch what little light is in the room and betray him, show him to be watching the soldier more often than not.

It's strongest, though, at the unstable edge of ecstasy. There's a minute, almost always, when Hal slows for whatever reason and his movements still even though Dave can feel his heart still racing in his chest, speeding even faster then before. He freezes and stares down, or up, or across or whichever damn way they're entwined, staring at his partner with shining eyes. Watching him with an entranced expression while Dave redoubles his efforts, desperate for the completion Hal is denying. Eventually the engineer breaks, shatters the façade and comes tumbling down, digging long fingers into Dave's skin and crying his name through a tight throat. But it's the grasping seconds before that Dave longs for, has come almost to need. Those tight heartbeats which last as long as Hal holds out, shivering under the onslaught of Dave's hands and tongue. The too-short instants when Hal watches him with burning eyes, still as a statue, staring down at him from on high and filling him inexplicably with grace.


End file.
